Dave Hughes, 75 years young and full of fidelity: I had the pleasure of meeting Dave Hughes at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference yesterday. Dave is one of the leading lights in pushing community-based wireless initiatives (as opposed to community wirelss networks). He ranted in Wales, home of his ancestors, and the Welsh committed what he said was $100 million to an ongoing project to bring broadband to places that British Telecom said were impossible to provide affordably.

Dave got in the loop with the Sherpa community through Gordon Cook and harrangued a friend at Cisco to provide the Nepalese Mt. Everest base camp with some wireless bridges and routeres to allow a satellite link to be relayed to offer connectivity. But base camp is just how he gets his real agenda going: to help Sherpas in the US (and elsewhere) provide distance learning to their relatives and countrypeople in Nepal. And to offer access to a village that's essentially cut off by Maoist insurgents.

Although Dave noted repeatedly that he was 75, I would have pegged him at 52, and only because of his white hair. Decorated veteran of two wars who graduated at the bottom of his West Point Class, Dave is a shining example of how generosity, intense obsession, and the Internet's worldwide reach can transform pockets of humanity.

Dave's greatest moment -- at least recently -- was when he picked up his voice-over-IP (VOIP) Vonage phone and dialed Mt. Everest. Tsering Gyaltsen answered on the second ring.